Are Journalists Starting to Figure It Out? (Chapter 2)

The answer is still probably No, as a close reading of today’s two samples will show.

Power Line’s very favorite reporter at the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin (/sarc), is out with an article wondering whether Obama is essentially assuming the fetal position. That’s not how she puts it; she says “running away,” and maybe we should go with the Monty Python refrain from Holy Grail. Anyway, Eilperin:

Bears, beer and horse heads: What exactly is going on with the leader of the free world? . . . But to some, breaking free can also look like running away.

Actually, after this promising start this entire “news”(??) story ends up being an apologia for Obama, so Eilperin still retains her top spot as Power Line’s favorite “reporter.”

Meanwhile, Eleanor Clift, formerly of Newsweek (remember that magazine from back in the heyday of rotary dial phones?), and one of the panelists that would make the McLuaghlin Group unwatchable even if it wasn’t broadcast in high definition, has expressed second thoughts about the “rape epidemic” on college campuses. Didn’t she get the memo about George Will’s column on the same subject?

Is The Campus Rape Crisis Overblown?

The finding that one in five women are sexually assaulted in college is as widely known as it is startling. Countless media reports repeat and recycle the alarming statistic, and it headlined the initial report introduced by Vice President Biden from the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Campus Assault.

But how trustworthy is that figure of one in five? An earlier poll found it was more like 1 in 40, but should it matter whether the real number is closer to the high or low end of the scale?

After this, however, the column goes all wobbly, and concludes thus:

[Christina Hoff] Sommers has legitimate questions about the slippery slope of government getting involved, but any argument that appears to minimize the problem will get slapped down by those who know better, and rightly so.